Complaint Review: Rakuten Logistics

I'm rating the actual performance of the company and the service they provide. The app doesn't do anything--if you're here, you're looking for someone to reliably ship your orders for you. Webgistix / Rakuten will ship orders for you, but nothing works as well as advertised. Here is how it will work. Naturally, the list below won't happen with every order, but it happens enough to be an extreme headache and an added burden to your job of running a business (I thought having someone else take care of all the shipping would ease the burden. Well, not if they generate a whole new bag of unexpected surprises). At least twice a month, Webgistix shipping has found a new way to completely mess up an order, inaccurately record receipt of a shipment, or performed some other costly blunder. Here are some excerpts you can look forward to happening with you:

1. They will not honor their same-day shipping guarantee.
Do not expect orders to ship out same-day, even if it's before the cut-off time. Unless you pay 50 cents extra per package, they will ship all your orders next-day. Even if you do pay 50 cents extra (for guaranteed rush fulfillment), they will sometimes not ship same-day. This has hurt me a lot because, prior to using Webgistix, I could promise all customers 100% same day shipping--and orders arrived very quickly as a result. With Webgistix, even when they say they are shipping same-day, sometimes they are really just printing the label so that it *appears* to be shipping, and customers will get packages later than expected.

2. They will lose your items
An entire shipment was confirmed as arriving at the warehouse, only for it to magically disappear. Theft? Misplaced? Doesn't matter--they never found the $500 worth of inventory.

3. They will make A LOT of mistakes and frustrate you to no end.
-Whatever can go wrong will go wrong at some point.
-Despite having 3 people check an order before it goes out, they will incorrectly package the items.
-They will ship a different method than what you set up as the appropriate shipping method (this can be costly if say, they ship something Express international instead of first class international).
-They claim that certain cost effective postage options do not exist (USPS does, in fact, have an express flat rate envelope, which customers loved until I had to stop offering it because Webgistix, whose only job is shipping packages, has never heard of it).
-It will take WEEKS to finally get the automated shipping options communicating properly between your store and the warehouse.
-You will receive your $700 setup rebate months after they promise to deposit it
-They will be very friendly throughout the whole process, but ultimately useless most of the time should anything go wrong.

This has been my experience with Webgistix / Rakuten over the past several months (November 2014 - February 2015). They are good people, but they will introduce a whole new set of headaches into your business. If, like me, you're at the point where you need to move to order fulfillment vs shipping packages yourself all day, you may unfortunately have to rely on them regardless. However, I advise you research all possible options, and if anyone sounds more competent, try them out first. Webgistix continually promised me "no more headache over shipping" and, truth-be-told, shipping everything myself was never a headache, just time consuming. Webgistix introduced the range and creativity with which shipping can be made a nightmare.